Spock's Brain : Before and After
by BobH2
Summary: What if there was a lot more going on in that tale than we ever imagined?
1. Chapter 1

Spock had his orders. He wouldn't say anything but I knew he didn't like them. Until our two guests and I returned, he was required to maintain the Enterprise in geosynchronous orbit over the planet below, and no one else was permitted to enter the transporter room in the meantime no matter what happened. He was as in the dark about the nature of our secret mission as the rest of the crew. That had to rankle, particularly given the identity of one of my companions on that mission.

"Have you set the coordinates, Lieutenant?" asked Sybok.

"Almost, Science Minister," came the reply. Sybok had brought Lieutenant Cho along with him, and assigned her to stay in the transporter room during our absence. None of my own crew had a high enough security clearance to see us on our way, apparently. Then again, despite being captain of the Enterprise, I myself had only been given our destination with no indication yet as to why I had been chosen for this particular jaunt in the first place. Science Minister Sybok was a powerful member of the Council of Ministers that actually ran the Empire, so the fact that he had decided to take an active part in the mission was an indication of just how important he believed it to be. Still, I couldn't help wondering if he had chosen the Enterprise because Spock was his brother.

Sybok was standing on a transporter pad beside me, as was his beautiful young assistant Kara Summers, the other person who'd come aboard with him. Both were wearing the same cumbersome harness as myself, high-tech devices without which the mission we were about to undertake would not be possible.

"Transporting on my mark," said Cho, "three, two, one..."

She flicked the switches, pushed the sliders up, and a second or two later we were dematerializing and beaming down to the world below.

Just not the one in our universe.

The first thing I noticed when we rematerialized was the biting cold. As well as being sixth planet from its sun and so at the far edge of that sun's habitable zone, Sigma Draconis VI was also currently experiencing a mini ice age. In this it was like its counterpart in our universe. The area where we'd landed was composed of largely uninteresting rock and dirt, with very little vegetation to speak of.

"Let's get the equipment moving," said Sybok, manhandling the container that had been on the fourth pad and beamed down with us, sheathed in a harness of its own. Sybok's breath was misting on the air as he moved about, as was mine, but not Kara's. Sybok pressed a button on the side of the container - which was as tall as a man - and it rose several centimetres off the ground when the internal antigrav kicked in, thus enabling us to push it along without effort. Through all of this Kara had watched impassively. Where I was feeling the cold even through the insulation of my uniform she was showing no signs of discomfort.

"I'm amazed those harnesses actually worked," I said.

"They are impressive, aren't they?" said Sybok. "The finest scientists in the Empire labored over them trying to duplicate the transporter effect that took you and your subordinates to the universe of the Federation, to this universe. Three months ago they succeeded. This mission is a direct result of that success."

"You still haven't told me what the mission is," I said, "what exactly it is we hope to accomplish on this freezing lump of rock."

"All in good time, Captain, all in good time."

Sybok led us over to a nearby cave. No sooner had we entered than a steel door closed down over the entrance and the whole cave shook as it started to descend.

"An elevator!" I exclaimed, surprised. "So that's why we landed where we did, but where's it taking us?"

"Beneath us lies a whole underground city. In our universe it exists only as ruins, but here it still lives even though its population has declined and now numbers little more than a hundred."

"Dangerous?"

"Hardly. A bunch of indolent pacifists whose subterranean existence has so far protected them from outside interference, living on the marvels created by their ancestors. And they _are_ marvels. You can guess how we knew to look for them in our universe..."

I nodded, fully aware of the amazing secret that lay behind the Empire's rapid expansion over the past century, a secret kept from everyone below the rank of starship captain.

"We were able to learn a lot from the remains in our universe, and will learn even more from the functional technology in this one."

The elevator came to a halt, the steel door slid upwards, and we found ourselves looking down a corridor and into the very surprised faces of several gaudily dressed men and women. Kara stepped forward and pressed a button on the large metal wristband she was wearing. I had assumed this was nothing more than an ostentatious piece of jewellery, one somewhat at odds with the starfleet uniform she was wearing, but it was obviously much more than that. In response to her action the men and women we'd surprised all crumpled to the floor.

"Are they dead?" I asked.

"Unconscious," replied Kara, the first time she had spoken since we left the ship, "as is everyone else in the city. They will stay that way until I release them."

"Your device is _that_ powerful?"

I let out a low whistle.

"We have to start issuing them to everyone in starfleet."

"I'm afraid it's one-of-a-kind, Captain, as is Kara herself. It's keyed to her body and won't work for anyone else. As for copying it, the technology is so far beyond our own we wouldn't know where to start."

"What do you mean when you say Kara is one-of-a-kind?"

"Haven't you guessed yet?" chuckled Sybok, "Despite appearing human to even the most sophisticated scanners, Kara is in fact an android, the most advanced we've ever come across."

"I was the last surviving sentient being on my homeworld when Sybok found me," said Kara, "and working for the Empire has given my existence meaning again after too many centuries when it had none. Kara was the name my creators gave me, but Sybok told me I would require a surname to fit into your society. So I chose Summers, because it was summer when he found me."

"Enough talk," said Sybok, "time to get to the hall of the Thinker. We have a tight schedule to meet."

The Thinker turned out to be a learning machine, similar to some prototypes I'd seen in the Empire but vastly more sophisticated. Kara stood before it, lowered its transparent dome over her head, and appeared to go into a trance. Sybok explained what she was doing.

"Kara is uploading large amounts of data from her mind, including how to successfully remove and replace a humanoid brain, a skill only she possesses in all the galaxy."

"Wait, what?" I said, non-plussed by this revelation.

"All will soon become clear. Now help me get the unit set up."

Sybok opened the container we'd brought with us. Inside were a couple of cases, but most of the space was taken up by a unit that looked like a featureless box with several hoses coming out of it, and a large dome on top.

"We need to connect it to the equipment here so that it appears to be a part of the system. The hoses have no actual function but will further the illusion."

I did as Sybok directed and we soon had the unit installed. We then stowed all the harnesses in the container and hid it away. As we finished so Kara lifted the dome from over her head.

"It is done," she said.

"Good, good, then make your way to the craft. You know what you have to do."

"Yes, Sybok."

"What craft would that be?" I asked when she had gone.

"The only one of its kind we know of," said Sybok, "ion-powered, like the city."

"Developing ionic-powered drives has been a goal of starfleet for decades. We must have it!"

"And you will, Captain - just as soon as our little charade here has run its course. However, before that can happen you and I have to process the populace."

"_All_ of them?"

"All of them. Between the two of us, and with the aid of some of these people's antigrav gurneys, we should just about manage it before Kara gets back."

Processing the populace involved dividing them into three groups and using the Thinker to essentially brainwash them. One group of males were reduced to a primitive state, outfitted with furs and spears and made ready to be deposited on the surface. The remaining men were rendered subservient to the women, while the women were made dominant. Everyone had their intelligence reduced to that of children and false memories implanted. The templates for all this came from Kara's upload and the scenario I knew we had to follow. We then opened the cases that had been in the container. One held belts with large circular devices attached, the other copies of Kara's wristband.

"They're non-functional," said Sybok, "but giving all the women one to wear disguises how unique Kara's is."

"And these?" I said, holding one of the belts aloft.

"Each contains one of our agonizers. These people don't administer painful punishment, but the scenario requires them to do so."

Processing close to a hundred people took a lot of time and I was pretty exhausted by the end. We did however finish just before Kara's return, as Sybok had predicted we would.

When Kara entered the chamber she was wearing the same clothing worn by the women of this world rather than her starfleet uniform and carrying a transparent sphere filled with a clear liquid.

Floating in the liquid was a brain.

"Whose is that?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

"It belongs to my brother," said Sybok, "or, rather, to his counterpart in this universe. We knew where the Enterprise would be, so it was a simple matter to have Kara intercept it. Now my dear, if you would...?"

Kara placed the sphere in the dome on top of the device we'd brought from our universe. It was a perfect fit.

"The machine will feed sensations into Spock's brain to give him the illusion he's running the city's systems," said Sybok, "while all the time it's performing its true function."

"You know that my counterpart and his crew will come here looking for Spock's brain, of course?" I said.

"I'm counting on it. The plan won't work if they don't."


	2. Chapter 2

I studied my doppelganger on the screen with interest. Since we swapped universes last time we had never actually met, so my only experience of him was through the images the Enterprise's internal cameras had caught and via my later debriefing of those crewmembers who had interacted with him. He was physically identical to me, of course, but I was sure that I could take him in a fight. Our strength and our fighting skills would be about the same, but unlike him I had no qualms about killing. In fact, I enjoyed it.

"I'll need a full report and analysis, of course, but what do you make of him?" asked Sybok, watching me thoughtfully.

I'd been starting to wonder if Sybok had brought me along just to do physical labor, but this was my real purpose here. I was to observe and assess this other Captain Kirk to a degree that no one else could.

"The man's a strutting popinjay," I said.

Alarmingly, Sybok burst out laughing at this.

"I imagine he'd say the same about you," he said, wiping tears from his eyes.

I don't think I'll ever get used to the sight of a Vulcan expressing emotion as freely as Sybok does. It's extremely disconcerting.

The two of us were sitting in a viewing room we'd located that gave us audiovisual coverage of everything happening in the chamber. We'd secreted ourselves in the room shortly before Kara woke the populace. A short while later a landing party had beamed down from the Enterprise. Several hours had then passed, and Sybok and I had watched as the other Kirk and his McCoy and Scott had entered, along with Kara and the body of their Spock, animated like some golem of old. They had soon discovered his brain was now housed in our machine, and had bought the story about it being dubbed the Controller and used to run the city. This was greatly helped by Kara, now their prisoner, who was turning in an impressive acting performance. She had just explained to them that while she had removed Spock's brain she could not restore it, that she was only given the necessary surgical skill in the first place by the Thinker.

"How long does the knowledge last?" asked Kirk.

"Three of your hours," replied Kara.

"It would be just enough time," said McCoy.

"If you had the knowledge, could you restore what you've taken?" asked Kirk.

"I would not," said Kara, defiantly.

"You must help us. You must restore with that knowledge what you have taken."

"No!"

I was impressed. Kara was really selling this.

"You must put back what you have taken."

"I will not betray my people. The Controller will stay."

"Jim, it worked for her. It might work for me."

Finally, McCoy had taken the bait.

"She is an alien," said Spock, his voice coming from a speaker somewhere. "The configurations of her brain are different. It could cause irreparable damage to your human brain, Doctor."

"I'm a surgeon already. If I could learn these techniques, I might be able to retain them."

"Captain, you might lose the doctor that way,"

"He might, but we're sure to lose you if I don't try."

"I cannot allow you to jeopardise your life for me."

"Spock, didn't you hear? I might be able to retain and bring these techniques to the world. Jim, isn't it worth that risk? Wouldn't you insist upon taking such a risk yourself?"

Kirk had carefully listened to this argument between McCoy and the disembodied voice of Spock, weighing what each man said before arriving at his decision. I recognised his process; how could I not?

"Go ahead, Doctor," he said. "Put the Teacher on."

"No!" cried Kara, managing to sound genuinely alarmed at the idea.

McCoy walked over to the device, and Kirk pulled the cowl down over his head. McCoy winced as knowledge flooded into his brain, clearly in pain, then fell to his knees.

"Of course," he said, eyes wild, "of course! A child could do it! A child could do it!"

Sybok and I both leaned forward in our chairs as McCoy began the task of restoring Spock's brain to his body. It was astonishing to watch. Scotty spoke for all of us when he said:

"I've never seen anything like it. He's operating at warp speed. I'd like a try at that teacher myself."

"This is where it gets interesting," said Sybok. "Now we'll learn just how long humans in this universe can retain such uploaded knowledge."

"That's the reason you set this whole thing up," I said, comprehension dawning.

"One of the reasons," he agreed, nodding. "To get a meaningful result, McCoy had to volunteer to accept a download rather than having one forced upon him. This scenario ensures that he does so."

"Then this was always an information gathering mission."

"In large part. We need to learn as much as we can about these people without letting them know that's what we're doing and...ah. It's happening. McCoy is starting to falter."

I looked back up at the screen as Sybok tapped some figures into a notepad. McCoy had been working away feverishly for well over an hour, but it was clear he was now in trouble.

"Bones? Bones?" said Kirk. What a stupid nickname! I couldn't imagine referring to my McCoy that way.

"All the ganglia, the nerves," said McCoy, looking and sounding spaced out. "There are a million of them. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?"

"Bones, you can't stop now."

"I'm trying to thread a needle with a sledgehammer. What am I supposed to do? I can't remember. I don't remember."

"Bones?"

"No one can restore a brain."

"You could. A while ago it was child's play."

Sitting beside me, Sybok leaned back and let out a satisfied sigh.

"Well," he said, "it looks like the length of time the humans of this universe can hold a knowledge download is the same as the humans of ours. Taken together with all the other measurements we've made, I'm now prepared to report to the Council a 99.9% physical match between us."

"Was that ever in question?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"There were those who thought it might be, hence this test."

I turned my attention back to the screen.

"Is Spock going to die?"

"I have no idea. Let's watch and find out."

Spock survived. In the event, McCoy reconnected his speech center and Spock then gave the Doctor a running commentary on the effect each connection he made was having. It was a clever solution, and McCoy was able to finish up before the final vestiges of the knowledge transfer fled his mind.

"Impressive," said Sybok, grudgingly. "These men of the Federation might one day make a more formidable opponent than we'd imagined."

"No," I said, "they won't. If that day ever comes we'll easily crush them. We have weapons they don't, weapons they have no defense against. It would all be over in less than a week."


	3. Chapter 3

After Kirk and his men had beamed back up to their Enterprise, Sybok and I emerged from hiding and went directly to the chamber of the Controller, where Kara was waiting for us. The city's population were once again all unconscious.

"That went exactly as planned," Sybok said to her, "well done."

"Thank you. The holo-matrix of Spock's brain is ready and awaiting your inspection."

"'Holo-matrix'?" I said.

"The real prize," said Sybok. "Let me show you. Computer, activate holo-matrix."

"Holo-matrix activated," said a mechanical voice.

"Good. Hello, Spock, how are you feeling?"

"I am somewhat puzzled to find myself still disembodied and running the systems of this city," came Spock's distinctive voice from out of the air. "Did the attempt to restore my brain to my body fail? Your voice sounds vaguely familiar..."

"That will be all for now. Computer, de-activate holo-matrix."

"Holo-matrix de-activated."

"I don't understand," I said, "that was Spock, but I saw his crewmates rescue him."

"Yes, but not before we made a perfect copy of his mind, of his soul if you believe in such things. That was the second, and most important function of the device that housed his brain. The intelligence in that holo-matrix believes itself to be Spock and is in every important respect as much the real Spock as the original. You grasp what this means, I'm sure."

"To all intents and purposes we've captured a senior officer of the Federation," I said, "but he doesn't know he's a prisoner and neither do they. We can trick him into telling us everything we want to know about their military capabilities, all their secrets."

"Precisely, and there's one final task we accomplished. It wasn't just surgical skills that were downloaded into Dr. McCoy's brain. No, we left a little something extra behind that should prove very useful if we ever have need of it."

He sounded very satisfied, and why not? This had been a totally successful mission. Only one thing remained to do.

"The ion drive," I said.

"I will remove the elements we need from both the spacecraft and the power plant before we depart," said Kara, "disabling what we leave behind in such a way that nothing useful can be learned from it and any damage appears to be the result of systems failure.

"What about the populace?"

"There's enough stored energy to keep them going until the Federation returns with the experts the other Captain Kirk promised would help them adapt to life back on the surface. They will discover the ion drive and power plant have suffered tragic failures, of course."

I frowned at this news. Had it been up to me I'd have wiped them out to forestall the small possibility of Federation scientists learning stuff from them we'd prefer them not to know. But then I'm a military man. Civilians like Sybok don't always have the stomach to do what should be done.

It took us several hours to complete our clean-up work and to remove all trace of our presence here. I wrecked the Teacher beyond any hope of repair then used my phaser to vaporise all the stuff our container had originally contained, though not the container itself. We would need that to transport the ionic technology we were taking back to our universe. When we were done, we returned to the elevator that would take us to the surface and Kara rewoke the populace as we started to ascend.

Donning our harnesses, we made our way to the spot where we had entered this world.

"Not to belabor the obvious," I said, "but there's no starship in orbit overhead to beam us up."

"Not in this universe, no," said Sybok, "but here's the really clever bit. Not every part of our harnesses made the transition to this universe. Special probes individually quantum entangled with elements of each harness were left behind and transported to this planet in our universe, burying themselves in the soil. As long as we stand on the same spot in this one, we can use that quantum entanglement to send a recall signal to our universe via those probes."

He pressed a button on his own harness.

"And when a transporter beam locks on those probes, that entanglement means we get pulled along too."

He was right. I could feel the familiar tingle begin as my atoms were disassembled...

...and then we were in the transporter room of my Enterprise.

"Welcome back, Science Minister," said Lieutenant Cho.

"Thank you, Cho. You may open the doors now. I'm sure my brother is already outside them."

Sure enough, as soon as the doors whooshed open, there was Spock. I stepped out of my harness and off my transporter pad, and Lieutenant Cho took my place.

"If you would be so kind, Captain."

"Certainly," I said, operating the transporter controls and smiling as Sybok, Kara, Cho, and the container holding the ion tech and the holo-matrix, all dematerialized.

The harnesses had been deactivated so this merely transported them to Sybok's own vessel, which had been shadowing the Enterprise since he first came aboard. If Spock was affronted by his brother taking off without saying hello he showed no sign of it.

"A successful mission, Captain?"

"Oh yes, Mr Spock, very successful indeed."

He wanted details, I'm sure, but he knew not to ask for more than I was prepared - or, in this case, allowed - to give him. For myself, I found my thoughts turning back to my doppelganger, to that other, inferior James T. Kirk. One day we were going to meet face-to-face.

I wonder if we'll both survive it?

The End

_Note:_

_1. This story takes place before the other Star Trek tales I've written to date._

_2. It incorporates a chunk of dialogue from 'Spock's Brain'. I was saved from having to transcribe this thanks to the complete Star Trek transcripts at _ startrek/_, a site I can recommend._


End file.
